New arts and cultural center opens; international artists featured

If you happen to be driving on Route 6 in White Mills and wonder about a sign in front of the old mill that says “PaPA,” you should drive into the parking lot of the building and stop in.

The sign stands for Parker and Parker Art and is fashioned along the lines of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, called MoMA. The owners say, “You visited the MoMA. Now visit PaPA.”

During the summer, PaPA is open on Fridays and Saturdays from 1 to 5 p.m. You will be welcomed to explore some of the finest art you have ever seen, as well as unusual antiques and artifacts. All the pieces are from the private collection of Ronald and Yvonne Parker from West Palm Beach, New York City and Lackawaxen. The couple lives in a former nunnery at the confluence of the Lackawaxen and Delaware Rivers.

Ronald has an impressive resume, with past ownership of about 20 galleries in such cities as Paris, New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Carmel and Maui. For a while, he was the CEO of two of the most prestigious art galleries in the world, Dyansen and Circle Fine Art in New York City. His non-artistic activities include a Ph.D. in psychology and an assistant professorship at Florida State University. He is still an adjunct professor of psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center on 42nd Street in Manhattan.

Despite this academic background, Ronald’s passion is now in the arts. “There is nothing more exciting and rewarding than to share art with the public,” he said.

Yvonne Parker, a graduate of the New York School of Interior Design, is an interior designer, painter and sculptor who has held two shows at the mill—“The Garden of Eden” in May of this year and “The Sensuous and the Beautiful” in July and August. A third and final show is called “Around the World” and will be shown on Fridays and Saturdays through September 22. The opening reception for the show at the mill was held on August 18 from 5 to 7 p.m. and was sponsored by Imperial Brands, Inc.

Yvonne will have a one-woman show this fall at the Ann Norton Sculpture Garden in West Palm Beach, Florida. She also participated in the recent Open Studio Tour held by the Wayne County Arts Alliance last month, featuring work from her “Fragmented Beauty” series.

On July 20, under the auspices of the Kindred Spirits art program, PaPA presented the Parker Quartet, a talented string ensemble of New England Conservatory graduates who have won numerous awards, including a 2011 Grammy and the coveted Cleveland Quartet Award for their 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 seasons. Other such events will be held in the future.

Interested persons can visit the mill by appointment at times other than Fridays and Saturdays. For more information, visit the PaPA website at www.papa18473.com[2]. The phone number is 570/296-5055.